


dulce et decorum est

by milkdaze (flowerstems)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 14:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7055461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerstems/pseuds/milkdaze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky sits on the roof of an apartment complex in broad daylight, metal arm glinting in the sunlight, one leg swinging off the edge, and he wonders what Steve is fighting for now. The city is new and different, looks broken from this angle, and he sits there for a while longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dulce et decorum est

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dalliancee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalliancee/gifts).



Bucky slowly starts to remember.

The memories are blurry, dream-like, and he doesn’t trust them because memory is an ever-changing thing; malleable and unreliable. It’s filled with holes like parts of himself he’ll never get back, parts he doesn’t think he wants anymore, but they nag at him when he tries to sleep and they wake him up faster than the cold does in the morning haze.

He remembers things like murder and war. Carnivals and medication. He remembers killing, both because he had to and because he wanted to, and being killed. He remembers dancing with women and teaching Steve how to dance. He remembers leaving women because Steve needed him. Steve needed him and that kept him going for a long, long time; even when he fell like an avalanche and felt himself die slowly, body freezing outside-in because it was so cold.

Steve doesn’t really need him now, Bucky doesn’t think he’s likely to need him ever again, but Steve still reaches out to him. Every dreamy night, whether Bucky is very awake or hardly, Steve reaches out, cries with tears that won't leave his eyes, and they fight even though Steve keeps saying he won’t fight him. There’s blood and things that can be fixed break; Steve is supine beneath Bucky and won’t try to save himself because it means leaving Bucky behind.

That’s why Bucky pulls him from drowning—because Steve could have continued to fight, but chose to stop.

He was always soft-hearted, even when he wanted to go to war. He only ever fought because he thought it was _good and just._

It always made Bucky feel fond of him, the way a parent might when their child says they want to be a superhero and save people from _bad guys._ Bucky’s supposed to be on Steve’s side.

When he sees Steve standing in front of him, opposing him, Bucky starts questioning what he’s fighting for.

His electric-coded brain floods and is drowned in memories that just flow and flow (and he’s bitter about that). Non-stop realisation and shock and _oh, right, that’s right, that’s what this means_ and Bucky has to find himself, rebuild himself, wonder what comes next.

Bucky sits on the roof of an apartment complex in broad daylight, metal arm glinting in the sunlight, one leg swinging off the edge, and he wonders what Steve is fighting for now. The city is new and different, looks broken from this angle, and he sits there for a while longer.

 

* * *

 

Steve finds him, somehow. He doesn’t ask and Steve doesn’t tell. They talk in thirty seconds.

Bucky says things he didn’t know he knew until he said them, and while he was saying them he was so sure he was right he only smiles when Steve relaxes. He still looks so strange like this, so tall and broad, shivering so little. Bucky feels he knew him for a lifetime and he did, but that was a lifetime ago and he doesn’t know if he knows Steve now. Steve doesn’t seem to share that concern. Steve seems confident that they know each other.

They go kicking and screaming out of the abandoned building; Bucky goes up while Steve goes down and they meet up in an alleyway at the edge of the city. It takes all night but they find a motel along a lonely stretch of road, Steve holds the visor of his cap over his eyes and gets a room for two while Bucky scours the area for the tenth time because he needs it to be secure. It’s not and he removes the wires and bugs from their room by the time Steve opens the door.

They look at each other, Steve looks at the open window, and Bucky shrugs out of his jacket when Steve asks why he didn’t use the door.

 

* * *

 

There are other things Bucky remembers, things he doesn’t trust because memory is an ever-changing thing; malleable and unreliable. Things like the curve of Steve’s smile when they’re teenagers and they steal candy from the shop two blocks down only to pay extra the next time they visit. Things like the bones of Steve’s wrists the night they celebrate returning from enemy lines alive and Steve stands near the doorway, nervous because of Peggy and Bucky really wishes him well. Things like the ringing in his ears when he falls and falls and Steve screams after him as though his voice will sweep under Bucky, become solid, lift him up and bring him back.

Things like the warmth of Steve beside him, how natural it feels. How natural it feels to have Steve’s skin under his fingers and he apologises for the cold of his unnatural arm when Steve shivers. Steve ignores it and fits his mouth over Bucky’s; he tastes like a century or a few, like war and ethanol, stubbornness and loneliness. Familiar.

Bucky knows the taste well but he knows the shape of Steve’s mouth better, remembers the sharpness of his teeth and the taste of his tongue, the way his lips yield only when they kiss. He slides between Steve’s legs and Steve brackets his body with his arms and legs, warm and ever present around him, and they remake their homes there in a rundown motel in the middle of nowhere.

It’s been so long; Steve’s skin is flushed all along his body and Bucky feels it, too, warm all over in a way he hasn’t been in _so long_ he almost thinks he’s fallen asleep. He thinks he’s obsessed with it. He thinks he won’t be able to let Steve go.

Memories are wispy, unreliable things. Dreams over dreams over dreams, with minimal truth the more they are remembered. Bucky doesn’t trust them, not for a moment, but this. This he trusts, this he feels. The ways Steve opens his mouth and the ways Steve opens his hands and lets slip pieces of his soul for Bucky to drink down like they’ll keep him going a few centuries more has to be real.

He knows this memory will become another dreamy thing he can’t trust when the sun rises.

 

* * *

 

One night the moon hangs low, cold in the sky and Bucky thinks about death.

He thinks about war and murder, too. Carnivals and medication. There’s a pair that no longer belongs. Death sticks like the cold to his nerves.

Steve started a war; Bucky knows because Steve told him and he’s sure because he heard it. War is the result of men with power and egos greater than their worth and it doesn’t end until rivers run red and bodies pile up and then they start again. People never learn.

Steve started a war and Bucky sits up in their too-small bed, sharing a too-thin blanket, with pale sheets that feel weird and smell weirder. The moonlight filters in through the closed window to spread dimly over the room and Bucky's eyes adjust to the lack of light. He looks at Steve laying beside him, legs sticking out from beneath the blanket, arms pillowing his head as he pretends to sleep, and Bucky thinks he’ll mourn Steve forever.

He buries his face in his hands, one flesh, one metal, both cold as the moonlight, and Steve curls a warm arm around his waist. It feels solid, reassuring, and Bucky trails his knuckles along Steve’s jaw, trying to memorise the exact warmth, the uncertain texture of Steve’s skin. Steve hums at the touch and his arm tightens around Bucky’s waist.

Bucky was lost, but he can’t come to terms with loss even after all this time.

**Author's Note:**

> this was written before i actually watched ca:cw sorry folks.  
> Title from Horace's “Odes” (The Old Lie: _Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori; “It is sweet and fitting/to die for one’s country”)._


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